Shrill response a possible symptom of growing gulf between Vancouver’s haves and have-nots

James Goodman is opposed to bike paths cutting through the middle of Kitsilano Park. Pete McMartin says the reaction from residents about a bike route going through the park is over the top and symptomatic of a larger demographic issue. (File photo)

Photograph by: Mark van Manen
, Vancouver Sun

I’ve been away — New York — only to come back to find that the latest public outrage directed against Vancouver city hall was generated by a proposal for ... dear God, say it isn’t so ... a bike lane.

Which will go through a park. Which, according to the fevered emails flooding our newsroom, will ruin the park’s ambience, encroach upon picnic areas and endanger the lives of innocent children who might stray into the path of hurtling, hell-bent-for-leather bicyclists. The last time we heard this level of rhetoric it was about oil pipelines defiling the pristine wilderness of northern B.C.

As in the previous bike go-round, these complaints emanated from the Kits Point neighbourhood. That Kits Point is a prosperous enclave tucked into a pretty little corner of the city may have something to do with its sense of being besieged.

But that doesn’t excuse the fact that the virulence of the complaints are matched only by their triviality. The charge that the parks board didn’t do enough public consulting? Bogus. And whatever its route, a bike lane running through a park is not an issue.

But the over-the-top response by critics of that bike lane is an issue.

It’s a disturbing trend that might be demographic in nature; or it might be a symptom of the growing gulf between the haves and have-nots in the city. But it’s shrill, and it betrays a panic that has entered the public discourse.

“How come you got guys my age in ties,” said Gordon Price, former city councillor and director of SFU’s City Program, “that just get adolescent about things like this? What’s behind this? I still don’t have a complete answer to it ... but part of it, I think, is the anxiety of change.”

Expressions of that anxiety aren’t new to Price. During his first public hearing as a councillor — this was back in the 1980s — he remembers a woman brought to tears because she was sure council’s decision to allow a four-storey building on what was once a gas station would turn her neighbourhood into the West End.

So, ‘twas ever thus.

But things have changed since Price was in office, price being one of them. When half the city’s single-family residences are worth more than $1 million, and the other half is rising toward that benchmark, it hardens homeowners against change. Their stake is all that much greater. Why embrace change when you can’t be sure what it would do to your significant investment? Why, for instance, accommodate multi-residential buildings near you when you and your neighbours already enjoy the luxury of a single-family home, the worth of which has appreciated beyond the breathtaking?

And so we’ve seen pushback from homeowners in Metro wherever they feel threatened — in White Rock, South Delta, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Coquitlam, but most especially in Vancouver, where council was besieged by four neighbourhood groups angry with the city’s official community plans for their areas.

Council retreated, sued for peace and postponed implementation of the plans. It was ill-advised of the city to try to do all four community plans at the same time, and some of the last-minute additions to those plans only helped inflame opposition to them. What’s the hurry, after all?

But Price, on the other hand, would ask:

Do councils these days have the luxury they once did of going slow? The population of Metro Vancouver grows steadily by an average of 40,000 people annually. We can expect another million by 2040. It used to be that Vancouver could easily accommodate that growth by directing it toward brownfield sites — those big, post-industrial acreages like False Creek and the Fraser lands.

But those sites are gone.

So the city has had to turn in on itself and densify, and, as we’ve seen, it isn’t going well. Revolt is popping up everywhere. The conversation has become strident. One wonders if the city, from a planner’s point of view, is becoming ungovernable, if it’s become a collection of Nimbyist neighbourhoods that make all the right noises about welcoming change but really no longer want anything to do with it.

Which is OK if you’re one of the haves. It’s not so much if you aren’t.

“The people who aren’t going to benefit from change,” Price said, “don’t feel they have anything to gain. So the amount of political capital you have to spend now to effect (change) doesn’t give you much in return.

“It might be at the cost of the council. That might be the price you pay.”

Which — and he would be the first to admit this — is easy for Price to say, now that he’s out of the game.

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James Goodman is opposed to bike paths cutting through the middle of Kitsilano Park. Pete McMartin says the reaction from residents about a bike route going through the park is over the top and symptomatic of a larger demographic issue. (File photo)

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